Buying advice - Rover 218 SD (TD)

That everything works.

Change the oil and filter if it hasn't been done in the last 5000 miles. Make sure you know when the cambelt was last changed.

And now for a serious answer to question 1. Ideally you want to see it started from cold so you know the glow plugs aren't knackered. If they are then chances are they'll get it warm before you come around so it appears to start fine. So get there early in the morning (when they're still in bed) and pester them to come out and sell you the car. That way is the only real way of knowing for sure that it starts fine first thing in the morning.

Find out how often it's been serviced. A lot of diesels will "manage" up to around 100-150k on a 10k service interval, but you're much much much more likely to easily get up to 200-300k +++ miles out of one if it's been serviced more often like every 4-5k. Partly to protect the turbo, but also because diesels dirty the oil a lot quicker than petrols do. I blame manufacturer's handbooks for people not getting diesels serviced frequently enough - quite often they just lump all variants of the same model together, for example "Rover 200 service interval = 10,000 miles". Having said that it all depends on the type of driving, and if it's done mainly motorway miles then it shouldn't have done too much harm (though I'd still stick to ever 5k myself).

Having said that my Fiesta TDi Van I bought a year ago had been serviced every 10-14k, but the guy had it in the main dealer for a service every 3 months, so a lot of miles were being done, though it could still have easily been all around town (I do around 50k/year just going in and out of London twice a day), but I did gather that a lot of it was on open roads, so it didn't worry me too much. I got 40,000 miles worth of trouble free use out of it (bar the fan belt snapping) until the oil cooler developed a crack that gave similar symptoms to a head gasket failure, but I sold it on on ebay instead of repairing it and didn't lose out too badly.

Anyway, I'm rambling, so I'll let someone else take over. Basically, if it's been regularly serviced (every 5k preferably, but if it's every 10k it won't be catastrophic if it's mainly motorway driving) and the cambelt's been done reasonably recently or they'll knock off £200 or so for you to get it done if it hasn't, then go for it. It's a Peugeot/Citroen engine, well renowned to be bloody good engines that last for a long time, and they're a reasonably nice car - by the way, is it the early-ish shape (the one that finished around N reg)?

Peter